Dr Jeffrey John has, much against his will, become one of the most famous – or infamous – gay clergymen in the world, but whereas Gene Robinson, the openly gay US Episcopalian bishop of New Hampshire, has embraced his celebrity, John has shrunk fastidiously from his. He generally does not give interviews, least of all about his homosexuality, or his civil partnership with his lifelong companion, another vicar, Grant Holmes. Both affirm that their partnership has been chaste for many years and the couple have undergone a civil partnership. Like Rowan Williams, he was a state scholarship boy from south Wales, though unlike Williams he went to Oxford rather than Cambridge.

His life has been as an academic theologian, first at Oxford, where he became dean of divinity at Magdalen, then as vicar of Eltham in south-east London and Canon Theologian at Southwark Cathedral.

Quietly spoken and diffident, his abilities would normally have singled him out for a bishopric. His mistake, as subsequently became clear, was to argue fairly discreetly for the church to bless same sex couples and to cease pretending that gay clergy do not exist. He came out in the 1970s to the then head of his theological training college in Oxford and asked whether he should continue training for ordination, but was instead congratulated – the principal, Dr David Hope, later went on to become archbishop of York.

Even evangelicals acknowledge that John, whose doctorate is in Pauline theology – ironically since St Paul is one of the few voices in the Bible to attack homosexuality – is an effective preacher and priest. He has been loved by congregations in Southwark and St Albans and has faced no hostility from those attending his services.